Rap Is a Path to Learn History
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Reginald Roberts, Star-Ledger (Newark), June 27, 2008
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The students in Caroline Pew’s sixth-grade class at the South Orange Middle School learned history through rap lyrics using a system called Flocabulary.
“The improvement in grades and student enthusiasm for learning history has grown exponentially from this program,” Pew said.
Flocabulary was created in 2005 by Alex Rappaport and Blake Harrison, whose New York-based company has brought the program to more than 7,000 schools nationwide.
{snip}
Their system used music and lyrics. “Rhyme is an amazing memory device. It facilitates the recall of information.”
The first version of Flocabulary focused on the words most used on the SAT, then branched out to include words students need to know through high school.
Rappaport and Harrison tapped into rap because that’s the music they know and love.
“Rap is known for the use of rhymes. And our motto is: Shakespeare is hip-hop. Today’s rappers are doing with music what Shakespeare was criticized for 400 years ago.”
{snip}
The program caught the eye of Pew [Caroline Pew’s sixth-grade teacher], who was attending the National Council of Social Studies conference in Washington, D.C., that year. She was so excited about Hip-Hop U.S. History, she began using it the second half of that school year.
After using the program in her class, she gave her students the chance to participate in a live workshop conducted by Rappaport and Harrison themselves. But the condition was, they had to pay for it.
She created competition between classes to see which one could raise the most money.
{snip}
The students went all out with bake sales, donations and corporate matches, Pew said. One of their big money makers was a wax museum.
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The students exceeded their goal of $3,500, raising more than $4,000. And the difference between the competing classes was only $27, Pew said. “It was a fight to the end.”
{snip}
They explained the likes of J.P. Morgan and Andrew Carnegie through popular rap songs. The students were asked to write their own lyrics using famous rap songs, metaphors and similes as their bases.
{snip}
Azariah Williams, another student, said Flocabulary made history easier for him to learn.
“I had to read the textbook over and over again. Using this on a test, it comes to you in instant recall.”
From the workshop he wrote this rap about one historical figure from the Civil Rights movement.
“My name is Rosa Parks. I was arrested over one seat. Lots of people thought I had lost my own beat. It’s 1955, everyone’s racist in this joint. It’s not fair. I was just trying to make a point.”
(Posted on June 27, 2008)
Comments
Children retain information easier the younger they are because they are building a foundation of life to live on. The rap aspect had nothing to do with better learning. I ‘learned’ the capitals of South and Latin American countries in high school, listening to them sung to a little tune. (It was in a Spanish class. I couldn’t tell you a capital today without singing through all of the countries.) Maybe it didn’t stick because of my age. Maybe I’m more of a visual learner. ????
If our future President respects the rapper, Ludicrous, with his foul-mouth lyrics; expect this type of thinking to continue. (Shakespeare and rappers should not be used in the same sentence.)
Posted by at 6:18 PM on June 27
Not the first time. “Math rap” was the late 1980s/early 1990s fad, at least in St. Louis. We can all see how well it worked.
Posted by Question Diversity at 6:46 PM on June 27
Wow, does this mean that blacks stole rap from whites in retaliation for whites stealing rock from blacks?
The plot thickens…
Posted by Patrick at 7:26 PM on June 27
“In Fourteen Hundred and Ninety-two”
The funniest thing I have ever seen is a scene from the Teen-age deliquent movie High-School Confidential. The one starring Russ Tamblyn as an under cover narc circa 1958. In it, one of the class clowns, Jerry Lee Lewis? gives a book report on Columbus in a JD/Beatnik style. “After Christy met his boat connection and scored three…” I was alone the first time I saw it and lost the ability to breathe while laughing so hard. I remember clearly thinking I am going to die over this stupid movie and no one will realize how it happened. Later that night I told a man about it who also remembered it at the time it came out. He told me that the theatres in 1958 handed out a sheet of paper with the whole spiel on it to kids leaving the movie. It was that good. Check it out!
Posted by Tim Mc Hugh at 7:36 PM on June 27
The movie clip I refered to was done by John Drew Barrymore and can be found on YouTube under High School History 1950`s B Movie Style. Sorry I don`t know enough to provide a link.
Posted by Tim Mc Hugh at 7:47 PM on June 27
I used this method to certain extent during my first year of law school when I had to memorize large amounts of new material every week. I actually remember some of the rhymes my study group came up with to this very day.
Posted by at 8:43 PM on June 27
This is fine for learning disconnected fragments. Obviously, it won’t help in learning about deeper patterns, but for elementary school kids it’s a good start.
Maybe Amren readers can come up with a few of our own:
In Nineteen hundred and sixty-five
America’s future was burned alive
For many people, it isn’t odd
That MLK changed from man to god
Posted by Reader-1 at 12:13 AM on June 28
You learn something every day, poetry was invented in 1985 by some genius named Rappaport, or was it rap without the C. ? Dr Seus with a beat, I can eat green eggs and ham, Sam I am. It never ceases to amaze, that some Johnny come lately, comes along a few hundred years after the fact. and seizes credit for someone elses accomplishments. History is determined only by those who record it.
Posted by THE OLD SAGE at 12:44 AM on June 28
“Rap is known for the use of rhymes. And our motto is: Shakespeare is hip-hop. Today’s rappers are doing with music what Shakespeare was criticized for 400 years ago.”
This ridiculous statement reaveals how stupid and ignorant rappers and hip-hopppers really are. Shakespeare was never criticized one way or the other any more than his contemporary playwrights or poets. All English artists during the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras were very careful when pushing the enevelope, and they knew their limits. Shakespeare was very conventional, but very creative and had a remarkable insight into human nature that has made him timeless. Rappers don’t do this. I can’t imagine to what perverted history these morons are referring. I could say that Shakespeare is Santa Claus, but that doesn’t make it so. Incidentally, the form of archaic Modern English used by Shakespeare is much easier to understand than hip-hop-rap slang and “ebonics.” How can these losers even begin compare themselves to the greatest writer in the history of the English language?
Posted by strut Ms. Lizzie at 1:32 AM on June 28
Just because it rhymes doesn’t make it rap! Rhyming is as old as language. Mother Goose had a good head start. It’s the message that makes the difference. Rap and hip-hop are frequently associated with crime, excessive materialism, unfounded victimization and violence. And does rhyme always work in education anyway? When I was an elementary school teacher, one of the faculty used a rhyming math recording with his students. As long as 7 and 11 rhymed, the students used it. On the playground at recess, 3rd graders would be chanting “11 times 11 is 107” over and over again. Yeah, it rhymes, but 11 times 11 is 121.
Posted by Helen Schmidt at 2:39 AM on June 28
Finally,
at least something different from bling, money, hoes and violence.
I actually am intrigued by this.
Rap about science and math and history and more…
I think it’s good.
Posted by at 11:18 AM on June 28
How about outlawing rap and just teaching the history?
Posted by Unemployed WASP at 11:57 AM on June 28
I can see some use in rhyming as a mnemonic aid for children — VERY YOUNG children. Kindergarteners, First Graders, those just entering the education system might find it helpful as a bridge between nursery rhymes and serious textbook study.
But beyond about age six or seven, I would imagine most (white and Asian) pupils would start to find this approach too childish, begin to be embarrassed by it; and want to file it, along with their pacifier and their coloring books, under “Little-kid stuff that big kids like me don’t do anymore.”
These (black) children in NJ, however, are not Kindergarteners or First Graders, they are SIXTH Graders. That puts them at age 11 (or, in many cases, older). If the only way to get a certain brand of pubescent youngsters to learn ANYTHING AT ALL is through simple, catchy doggerel, then you have a racial learning gap.
A racial learning gap of SEVERAL YEARS. That’s a BIG gap, my friends: substantive and non-trivial.
And is it really possible to have such a learning gap without some analogous IQ gap?
That black children have to be, in effect, bribed with hip-hop in order to make it through the school year, is bad enough. That they’re using this mendacious “Flocabulary” scam to promote black-supremacist bigotry such as that found in Azariah Williams’ pathetically uninventive (and surprisingly arrhythmic) Rosa Parks rap, is worse still.
It is often alleged on this forum that the current education system in America teaches minority students little other than anti-white attitudes and a victim mentality. This article only confirms that view.
Posted by The Incredible Shrinking White Man at 12:50 PM on June 28
……..”And does rhyme always work in education anyway? When I was an elementary school teacher, one of the faculty used a rhyming math recording with his students. As long as 7 and 11 rhymed, the students used it. On the playground at recess, 3rd graders would be chanting “11 times 11 is 107” over and over again. Yeah, it rhymes, but 11 times 11 is 121.”
Posted by Helen Schmidt at 2:39 AM on June 28
Yes, Helen, but I am just a little surprised that you don’t mention here that this was a common form of instruction at least in the English speaking world during the 19th century if not earlier. It was called “Blab School.” Chilren shouted their lessons in class. I was actually taught French this way in 1966-67 and I found it a very good method as everyone participates. There is a very good example of this in the old film “Ryan’s Daughter” where Robert Mitchum uses this method in the Irish one room school house.
Posted by at 12:57 PM on June 28
So once their public school education is over, will they be able to “rap” their way through college and a job?
Oh I forgot- they’re minorities so they won’t have to work.
Posted by at 3:50 PM on June 28
There’s a mnemonic used in electronics for learning the resistor color code:
Black Brown Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Violet Gray White
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Black Boys Rape Our Young Girls But Violet Gives Willingly
Will this be incorporated into Flocabulary?
Posted by S.L. Cain at 3:53 PM on June 28
Oh, God, where to begin? Rap as a learning tool, an art form? Sort of reminds me of the enthusiasm for Ebonics a few years back. Incidentally, like most whites, I already be fluent in Ebonics, speaks it jus’ like a brother when Ah wants.
All it takes is bad grammar, poor enunciation, and use of an extremely limited vocabulary.
All these briefly celebrated “ideas” illustrate the increasingly desperate and bizarre attempts get black youth to show some interest in learning.
Posted by John at 4:37 PM on June 28
Rap is also a great way to glorify crime, rape and the gangsta culture.
Posted by Fed Up at 6:08 PM on June 28
When I attended school in the 50’s in Scotland we had rap too. In grade 1 [5-year olds] we learned our alphabet & other things by what is called rote learning: 2 times 2 is 4, 2 times 3 is 6, 2 times 4 is 8, etc. I still can remember those tables today though i have never needed them in my entire working life. It is a good mehod of teaching for the young developing mind. Yea, okay, that includes rap artists too.
I just wanna get my bit in because I know that as they have given it an Ebonics title ‘Flocabulary’ then for sure it will be promoted in our insane PC world by some Black Studies professor who will now write a treatise stating that Ol’ Whitey stole rote learning from the rap of Africans just like they stole the invention of black-invented spacecraft & many other things. But as someone said in an earlier post rote learning has been around as long as the human race. Add a catchy melody [obviously not rap or hip-hop] & it is even more effective.
It’s just the same old Marxist deconstruction jive rehashed. Or as one of these geniuses might chant in Ebonics with an accompanying bongo drum or two:
If you wanna know the score
lay the truth upon the floor
you’re gonna hear me shout
that old Will is dead and out
dead white men, dead white men
but I have to sing my song
and the rhymin will go on
cos we is be-yoot-iful
we is the African intell-ect-yoo-ul
dead white men, dead white men ….
I’d love to continue talking to all you great Amren folks but I gotta rush down to the store and buy myself a pair of baggy pants and one of those baseball caps they wear, but every store I’ve been in, the caps all have their peaks at the front.
Posted by dr dees brainwashing elixir at 7:30 PM on June 28
Rap is not music…. or poetry Period.. Any usage is totally contridictory to intelligence.
I like Classical, New age, and Heavy metal…
Rap fuels the idiotic intelligence of blacks in their pursuit of cultural identity.
Posted by sandy at 9:16 PM on June 28
History is wonderful. My brother-in-law, who is out of the JMSDF was curious about the battles of the age of sail, so we all watched “Master & Commander” here, and then I taught him “Wooden Ships & Iron Men”. We exhausted the scenarios and then I started to research more in May. I’ve got 60 more historical battles researched and written up as playable scenarios since May, when the original game comes with 23, and I’m working on ten more. He was a good playtester, and we tested the rules for steam propulsion, shell guns and the early ironclads. The unarmored ships very wisely stayed out of the melee at Lissa in 1866 (except for “Kaiser”, a 91-gun wooden steam&screw two-decker, who’s captain was perhaps braver than he was smart.)
We played Sinope this evening. Since the Russians with six ships of the line armed with Paixhans shell guns were firing at anchored Ottoman frigates, the result was not in doubt. The result of our game was was almost historical; every Ottoman ship sunk, burned, blown up or onshore and then shelled to pieces while grounded. I played as the Ottomans and did my best, but the breeze from offshore that starts the scenario - and started the battle - really traps the Turks.
If 1472 is now “rap” material, I hope I will be allowed to keep 1588 just for myself to smile about.
Posted by at 12:03 AM on June 29
I don’t sing about that sort of thing, but I write poems.
I’ve alread posted “Another Day” and “Dreaming of Diane” here.
I like the second one better:
Dreaming of Diane
Love’s sweet glory, loss and pain
years down the road, all yet remain.
Of you,
I still dream.
Smooth fair skin and golden hair
when sleep comes to me, you’re always there,
ever
seventeen.
I kiss you nights, caress your face
dreading we must part from our embrace
at dawn
when I awake.
When a day’s despair towers,
if I can wait a dozen hours
my heart
will not break.
Secret smiles, unnumbered tears
wicked distance lasting miles and years:
Never
while I sleep.
My heart toughened, yours still mild,
I’d wish you the mother of my child.
Of this
I will weep.
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 1:19 AM on June 29
Afew yrs. ago they wanted to use ebonics as a teaching tool, now trying rap, what’s next? The exalted leader, Reverend Wright was right, they are incapable of learning in a classroom like other races.
Posted by abc at 4:39 AM on June 29
Unless hip-hop “music” became peer-reviewed when we had our backs turned, any “rap” about history is likely to be as subjective as my paeans to old girlfriends.
Who really wants to watch someone jump around onstage and grab his crotch while he raps about the end of the battle of Camperduin in 1797, in which captured Admiral de Winter offered Admiral Duncan his sword, whereupon Duncan refused and shook his hand? Or the maimed Dutch Admiral Vlacq dying in a French prison in 1703, content that his sacrifice of himself and his squadron allowed the convoy of some 110 merchant ships he was escorting to get clear of the French?
What would one rhyme with Nelson’s 1805 signal at Trafalgar “England Expects Every Man To Do His Duty” and his own last words, dying of a wound from a musket ball that passed through both lungs and broke his back, “Thank God I have done my duty.”
A historical rap song about the disgusting calumnies Thomas Edison heaped upon fellow inventor Nicola Tesla would probably work, as most rappers have the obscenities down pat.
I can’t wait until someone with a 6-karat “gold” medallion the size of an institutional wall clock on a chain around his neck (or maybe just an institutional wall clock on a chain around his neck) flashes “gang signs” while rapping about how Theodore Roosevelt was shot by a would-be assassin on the way to give a speech, gave the speech anyway, and went to the hospital afterward.
Maybe one rap song could involve all of these and be called “Dead White Menz”, while the refrain could be “They don’t make ‘em like that anymore.”
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 2:09 PM on June 29
Sounds like training anminals through operant conditioning to me. Getting close to having to give them a treat after each simple action. I read that some cities are even having to give minority students money as a reward to attend school. I said to attend, not to learn anything. Their children cannot be any more dysfunctional that that. 14 year old girls spitting our little welfare checks and 15 year old boys participating in drive-bys. Doesn’t get much more screwed us than this.
Posted by at 11:35 PM on June 29
“Just because it rhymes doesn’t make it rap!: Helen
No indeed Helen. You need disgusting obscenities, vile degrading lyrics about women, violent anti-white rhetoric, and arrogant macho man bragging to make rap!
Posted by Sardonicus at 10:55 AM on June 30
“Shakespeare is hip-hop. Today’s rappers are doing with music what Shakespeare was criticized for 400 years ago.”
Riiiiight! Most rap is far too obscene to post on Amren, of course. But for your reading pleasure, here is Rap-god “Tupac” from his “poetry collection” that he wrote to sell to diverse public schools for their literature classes (this is one of his famous “poems” that liberals like to compared to Shakespeare):
Ambition over Adversity by Tupac
Take ones adversity
Learn from their misfortune
Learn from their pain
Believe in something
Believe in yourself
Turn adversity into ambition
Now blossom into wealth
That’s the whole thing! It sounds like he ate a handful of Hallmark cards and then threw them up on paper. Bring on the Pulitzer!!
Posted by Jill at 4:54 PM on June 30
We learned the times tables by reciting them with the class from age 4-1/2 so even now if someone asks me what is 7 x 5, I know immediately. Many young ones today reach for a calculator.
Also, singing the Alphabet. RAP is nothing new in this way.
Posted by B J Deller at 5:21 PM on June 30
Using music in learning is very old. Noah Webster was into that, and he has pretty good creds as the patriarch of American English and education. Whether rap is a good idea, however, is debatable.
Posted by Dumbo at 11:36 PM on June 30
“Riiiiight! Most rap is far too obscene to post on Amren, of course”
This link has been here for years. Of course, the reader must fill in the actual words.
http://www.amren.com/rap/rap1.htm
Posted by too obscene for words at 1:12 PM on July 1
I think every trick has been used to try to educate blacks, however, one piece of the puzzle seems to be missing-the fact that blacks have a lower native intelligence than do people of European and Asian descent (see the “Bell Curve” as well as the research compiled by the Pioneer Fund).
Posted by Dan R at 2:49 PM on July 2